Jyoti Thottam

Jyoti Thottam is TIME’s South Asia Bureau Chief. Based in New Delhi since 2008, she has reported from every country on the Subcontinent. She covered the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009 and mass protests in Kashmir in 2010. She joined Time Inc. in New York as a reporter in 2000, covering technology and then business and was named senior editor in 2007. She grew up in a suburb of Houston, Texas, and is a graduate of Yale University and Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. On Twitter at @jyotithottam.

Articles from Contributor

Allegations of visa fraud have been a constant complaint by critics of the outsourcing industry, who say that firms misuse complex U.S. immigration laws to get their Indian employees to work in the United States. That’s the subject of the investigation underway now against Infosys. It started with an Alabama lawsuit filed in February …

The Pew Center has a fascinating new poll out this week measuring public opinion in Pakistan. Among the most surprising results is the degree to which Pakistanis’ view of India have deteriorated over the last several years:

“Pakistani views of traditional rival India have grown increasingly negative in recent years.

Ban Ki-Moonwon a second term as United Nations Secretary General yesterday, affirmed by applause as he was the only candidate. Ban pitched himself as a mediator and bridge-builder, so it’s not surprising that he has been a less visible, less controversial and, his critics would say, less charismatic Secretary General than his …

Reports of Saleem Shahzad’s horrible death made the front pages of some of the newspapers in India today. Like the other alarming news from Pakistan lately, the murder of this prominent journalist only confirms India’s longstanding criticism of the ISI as a source of treachery. Anita Joshua, writing on the front page of the Hindu today, …

It is an almost irresistible comparison. When Mamata Banerjee triumphed over the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in recent state elections in West Bengal, she ended the rule of the world’s longest continuous democratically elected Communist government. Here’s how Swapan Dasgupta described it to the Financial Times:

Some big news from New Delhi today on one of the world’s biggest outstanding defense orders: the $10 billion contract to supply 126 fighter jets to the Indian Air Force. After the news broke that both U.S. bids were out of the running, the U.S. Ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer, resigned.

In a piece appropriate to the “theatre of the absurd that passes for governance” in Sri Lanka, Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu of the Centre for Policy Alternatives offers up a take on recent events that moves seamlessly from earnest policy analysis to a wry disquisition on President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s upcoming appearance in a new version …

Indians seem to have poured all their collective anger over corruption in government and the bureaucracy into a 71-year old social activist named Anna Hazare. He started a “fast unto death” on April 5, vowing to sacrifice himself unless the Indian government passed a law creating a “Lokpal,” an ombudsman body with the power to …

Bangladesh’s Supreme Court has rejected Mohammad Yunus’ appeal to continue as head of the Grameen Bank. This is bad news for Yunus, certainly, but not the end. Yunus, a pioneer of microfinance and winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize, has been under pressure for months, with the Bangladeshi government first floating charges of financial …